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Jelena's Song

Description

A yellow curtain billows in an open kitchen window; white clouds meander
across a summer sky; a family photograph shot in Croatia loses focus; a young
girl poses in her favourite blue chair on the steps of their first house in
Canada.

Jelena’s Songis an elegantly
structured visual and sonic poem about the transformative power that emerges
from an artist’s journey through memory and the rituals of everyday life.
Like memory itself, the film gathers fragments of images, freeze frames, faded
family photographs and youthful photo-booth self-portraits, journals, poetry,
an evocative sound design and the simple honesty of Jelena’s voice into a
lyrical tapestry that reconstructs her past and re-imagines her future.

Jelena’s intelligence and courage permeate this film. As she unearths a
rich family history, memories of a period of childhood trauma become only one
thread of a complex and loving childhood. Her search for self-awareness spans
continents, cultures and generations, and as she recovers the meanings behind
family traditions, she learns the value – the ordinary magic – that lies at
the heart of everyday rituals. In doing so, she tells a powerful story about
her psychological journey to liberate her own creativity and raises profound
questions about the multiple meanings of memory, photography and identity.